All mentors

Mahesh Jeswani

Chief Product Officer with 20+ years in product, from software engineer to CPO

San Jose, United States (-08:00 UTC) Englishfrom San Jose, United States
Free
Price per hour
15 min
Time Blocks Available
0.00
0 reviews / 0 sessions
Fri
16
Next availability
Profile Expertise

Bio

I can help you make progress on the product, business, or career challenge you’re facing. If you’re building a product, we can work through how to find product–market fit, win your first customers, move beyond early traction, and scale. If AI is part of the conversation, I can help you separate real business opportunities from noise and shape a product strategy around customer and company value. If you’re a product leader, aspiring executive, or founder, we can tackle the decisions that are hard to pressure-test inside your own company: what to prioritize, how to improve product stickiness and growth, how to connect product work to ARR, retention, and margins, and how to align your team around execution. I can also help you navigate executive influence, organization design, hiring, go-to-market strategy, turnarounds, pivots, and strategic bets. I bring more than 20 years of experience building software and leading product teams. I’ve been CPO at Measured and Udacity, led AI-powered industry solutions at Google Cloud, and worked at Marketo, Icertis, and SAP. My experience spans startups, public companies, and PE-backed businesses, across AI, enterprise SaaS, cloud, marketing technology, learning, and procurement. I also made the journey from software engineer to CPO. If you’re working toward executive leadership—or already in the role and facing a difficult moment—we can talk through how to build trust with your team and peers, strengthen your influence, and make your impact visible to the business, board, and investors. I enjoy mentoring early-stage builders, too. You may have the tools to build, but still be figuring out customers, positioning, and what it takes to bring a product into the real world. I can be a candid sounding board as you work through those challenges. Bring the decision or problem on your mind. I’ll help you get to the heart of it, consider your options, and leave with practical next steps.

Expertise

  • Product market fit

    A lot of the founders I talk to have found an early set of users and cannot get beyond them, or are not getting traction at all. I work through who the product is really for, what the evidence actually says, and what has to be true to cross the chasm. I have frameworks for this from doing it across startups and large companies.

  • Product management

    I have always been a product leader, across product management, product design and product development. I help with prioritising roadmaps, deciding what to build and what to drop, and scaling a product past the point where the early approach stops working.

  • Leadership

    I went from software engineer to Chief Product Officer, and I was CPO at my last two companies. I help leaders who are in the seat but struggling: building relationships with peers, earning a reputation with their team, and driving impact the board and investors can see.

  • Career guidance

    My own path had a lot of shifts in it before I got to the C level. I like working with aspiring leaders who cannot crack that next step, talking honestly about what changed for me, what the gaps usually are, and what to do about them.

  • Artificial intelligence

    I spend a lot of my time on where AI creates real business value rather than where it is just noise. That includes incumbents feeling bombarded by AI startups and working out how to respond, and newer builders who have shipped something with AI tools and now need to figure out what the business around it is.

  • Building a team

    I have led product, design, data science and technology teams at companies including Measured, Udacity, Google, Adobe Marketo, SAP and Icertis. I can talk through how to structure those teams, how they work together, and how to keep them effective through organisational change.

  • Idea validation

    Many people now build first and ask who it is for afterwards. I push on the basic questions early: who is this for, what have you actually tested, and what would change your mind. I do this a lot with first time and younger builders who have the tools but have not been through the real world yet.

  • Go to market strategy

    Once there is a product, the question becomes how to find the first customers and then go beyond them. I work with founders on that transition from early users to a repeatable path to market, drawing on time at both venture backed startups and large public companies.

Industries

  • SaaS

    I have spent a little over 20 years in software, including at Udacity, Adobe Marketo, SAP and Icertis, across startups from Series A to Series F, a PE backed company and publicly traded companies.

  • Artificial Intelligence

    I advise on where AI can create real business value, both for incumbents being disrupted by AI startups and for new builders putting products together with AI tools.

Experience

  • Measured

    Chief Product Officer (AI-Powered Marketing Effectiveness Platform)

    Shaped company vision and drove enterprise growth by transforming an early MVP offering into an enterprise-grade SaaS and Agentic platform unlocking 100+ leading consumer brands including Gap, Foot Locker, and Unilever. Scaled platform to 30k+ experiments, 300+ integrations, 60k+ daily API calls, and 500+ unique conversion events. Responsible for all product, design and data science teams to build the industry's first causal AI media measurement platform - unifying MMM, Incrementality Testing, and Platform Attribution delivered through SaaS and agentic product experiences. Drove double-digit enterprise ARR growth, and significantly improved NRR and GRR. Transformed both technical teams and SMEs into full stack AI product builders. Key Capabilities: AI Agents, Causal Inference, Agile media mix models (MMMs), Incrementality experiments, Predictive media budget optimization, LLM and GenAI based user experience.

  • Udacity

    Chief Product Officer (AI-Powered Learning Platform - Consumer & Enterprise)

    Acquired by Accenture! Responsible for 50+ members across product, design, analysts and content managers. Reimagined, built and launched Udacity's learning platform for the enterprise workforce, shifting from long-form courses to bite-sized, AI-personalized learning paths, driving stickiness through recurring subscriptions, gamification, and collaborative cohort-based learning with peers and managers. Improved enterprise student engagement, NRR, GRR.

  • Google

    Product Lead (AI-Powered Industry Solutions - GCP)
    •google.com

    Led product initiatives for hyperscale compute infrastructure powering Google’s billion-plus-user products, including YouTube, Search, Gmail, and Android. Built specialized forecasting ML models, low-code automation, and partner integrations to optimize capacity forecasting, procurement, and global supply chain operations across more than $40B in annual infrastructure spend - delivering over $100M in annual savings. Later, productized and commercialized internally proven ML capabilities within Google Cloud Industry Solutions as fully managed, enterprise-scale AI solutions built natively on Google Cloud for complex, industry-specific business problems.

  • Icertis

    Senior Director of Product Management (Enterprise SaaS Vertical Applications)

    Built and launched an entirely new suite of AI-powered vertical applications on the Icertis contract management platform within six months of joining: sourcing, supplier management, and compliance. Transformed Icertis from a single product into a multi-product platform expanding net new revenue by 20%

  • Marketo, an Adobe Company

    Director of Product Management (Marketing Automation SaaS Platform)
    •marketo.com/

    Acquired by Adobe! Led the product vision, strategy, execution and launch of Marketo’s next generation marketing automation platform targeted to enterprise marketing and sales teams (Account-Based Marketing Application, Full Funnel Measurement and Optimization ) Launched an industry-first account-based marketing platform from ground zero. Achieved #1 product ranking on G2.

    SaaSB2B

  • SAP

    Director of Product Management (Enterprise SaaS Platform & Applications)
    •sap.com

    Led the product vision, strategy and execution of Ariba’s catalog management platform targeted to B2B buyers and sellers, powered by world's largest B2B trading network (private marketplace)

  • Larsen & Toubro Infotech Ltd (LTI)

    Senior Software Engineer

    Key member of the Center of Excellence (COE) team. Played software engineer, engineering manager, and onsite leader roles. Software engineered various customer solutions based on Microsoft and SAP portfolio of technologies.

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